A team of Caltech astronomers has pinpointed a gamma-ray burst several billion light-years away from the Milky Way. The team was following up on a discovery made by the Italian/Dutch satellite BeppoSAX.

Question: Does the earth keep a constant distance from the sun? If not, will the earth get closer to the sun and become more warm?

Submitted by Steven S. Showers Newbury Park, California

Answered by Andrew Ingersoll, professor of planetary science, Caltech.

Dr. Neill Reid, using information collected by the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite, has determined that a key distance measure used to compute the age of certain Milky Way stars is off by 10 to 15 percent. The new data leads to the conclusion that the oldest stars are actually 11 to 13 billion years old, rather than 16 to 18 billion years old, as had been thought.

PASADENA, California — The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) will play three key roles in the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) in the areas of management, resource deployment, and technology and application initiatives. The NPACI program is one of two partnerships each awarded approximately $170 million over five years in the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) slated to begin October 1, 1997.

Submitted by Pat Orr, Altadena, California, and answered by Tom Apostol, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, Caltech.

PASADENA— Scientists have designed a polymer that could vastly improve the way diabetics measure their blood glucose levels. The polymer is described in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology.

According to Dr. Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, the polymer is superior to the current enzyme-based glucose detectors because it is not of biological origin. The polymer will be easier to make and thus lead to cheaper and more reliable glucose sensors.

PASADENA— Those who think the winter of '97 was rough should be relieved that they weren't around 2.2 billion years ago. Scientists have discovered evidence for an ice age at the time that was severe enough to partially freeze over the equator. In today's new issue of Nature, California Institute of Technology geologists Dave Evans and Joseph Kirschvink report evidence that glaciers came within a few degrees of the equator's latitude when the planet was about 2.4 billion years old.

PASADENA—Los Angeles reporters and camera crews responding to a 5.4-magnitude earthquake this morning got their first look at the new Caltech/USGS earthquake monitoring system.

Submitted by Frank Cheng, Alhambra, California, and answered by Joann Stock, Associate Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Caltech.

Each plate is moving in a different direction, but the exact direction depends on the "reference frame," or viewpoint, in which you are looking at the motion. The background to this question is the fact that there are 14 major tectonic plates on Earth: the Pacific, North America, South America, Eurasia, India, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, Cocos, Nazca, Juan de Fuca, Caribbean, Philippine, and Arabia.

PASADENA— Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have determined that Earth's mantle reaches a maximum temperature of 4,300 degrees Kelvin. The results are reported in the March 14, 1997, issue of the journal Science.